World Battlefronts: BATTLE OF RUSSIA: Blitz in Bessarabia

Like a time bomb ticking toward its hour, the Red Army on the south Russian front had waited quietly while up north titanic battles raged. Last week, as Rumania broke with the Axis, the hour, timed with exquisite nicety by the Russians, struck in thunder. From the Carpathians to the Black Sea, the Russians burst forward in their most spectacular and possibly most decisive molnia (Russian version of blitz) of World War II.

The action began along a 156-mile front —the mouth of a funnel narrowing into the Galati Gap, where 45 miles of Danubian plain, marsh and delta separate the mountains from the sea. On the Gap’s farther side stretch the fat grain fields of Rumania, the high roads to Ploesti’s oil, and the strategic plains of Hungary.

Down the Carpathian flank of the funnel poured General Rodion Malinovsky’s Second Ukrainian Army. A massive artillery barrage cracked the concrete firing points built by the Germans around Jassy, Rumania’s second city (pop. 100,000) and ancient capital, famed for monasteries and native daughter Magda Lupescu.

For 24 hours Russians and Germans fought a savage street battle. Then the city fell. The Second Ukrainian Army lunged southward through ripening wheat and corn, sent spearheads westward into the beech-clad Carpathian foothills, penetrated Hungarian-held Transylvania. At week’s end it hammered past Focsani, western anchor of the Gap’s defenses and a main junction on the railway to Ploesti.

Meeting in the Center. Along the Black Sea flank of the funnel raced General Fedor Tolbukhin’s Third Ukrainian Army. A huge breach opened in the Nazi lines. A column sickled westward into the funnel’s center, joined troops of Malinovsky’s army. Kishinev, pogrom-haunted seat of Bessarabia, was stormed. Below the city the Russians closed a noose around 60,000 Germans. Then the Third Ukrainian sped down the coast. At week’s end it stood deep within the sprawling, muddy Danube Delta, held the old Turkish fortress town of Ismail, swept into Galati, eastern anchor of the Gap.

Within a week the Russians had ad vanced 125 miles, overrun 18.500 square miles, recovered all of Bessarabia, killed or captured 300,000 enemy troops. They were less than 60 miles from the Ploesti wells. 80 miles from Bucharest. In addition, their molnia had:

¶ Hitched Rumania tactically as well as politically to the Russian star, shattered the Nazi sphere in the Balkans (see FOREIGN NEWS).

¶Turned the German Carpathian line. ¶Snatched from hungry German fingers the rich Bessarabian grain harvest, threatened to snatch the whole Rumanian breadbasket as well as the oil wells that supply one-third of the Wehrmacht’s fuel. ¶Deprived the Welirmacht of some 300,000 Rumanian soldiers. Most of the fight had gone out of these troops (except in Transylvania, where they took up an old feud against the Hungarians).

In last week’s battle thousands of Rumanians laid down their arms. One group emerged from a forest hideout, begged Cossack cavalrymen: “Please take us prisoners!” The scornful Russians cried, “Back there! Back there!” sent them into internment without guards.

Rumanian defection had ripped the Welirmacht Balkan setup to shreds. At one spot the Russians saw the bodies of three Rumanian machine gunners shot by a Nazi SS officer. Near by “sprawled the corpse of the Nazi. A fourth Rumanian had picked him off.

It was typical of the new deal in the Balkans. Snarled the Berlin radio: the Rumanian front is “disintegrating under the impact of troubles and treason.”